More chronicles of a dinosaur

Yesterday my older granddaughter celebrated her first communion. At the end, the whole class lined up at the front of the church to get photos taken.
I had brought along my Nikon DSLR, extra lenses and a large flash in a camera bag. My wife thought I was nuts. Maybe I was. At the very least I was a dinosaur.
About 30 people took photos - 29 with a smartphone and me with my Nikon. I didn't use the flash at the church - light was pretty good and the big camera handles lower light situations well.
When we took photos of the family with Veronica, later on, I put the honking big flash on the camera to avoid red-eye and fill in the images. Took about 70 shots with no worry about the battery dying in the middle of it all.
Since I had the only real camera there I could be authoritative and get a big crowd in line to take the picture. I doubt that would have happened with a smartphone in hand. Put my SD card in my son-in-law's laptop and he had the photos instantly.
Some wonderful memories were made along with the images. But oh my did I feel weird at the church with the only actual camera. The art of photography has changed to be smartphone-based - even in the couple of years since my grandson's first communion.

I just bought an inexpensive Nikkon (A10) for my mother, who's been without a camera for a year and misses not being able to take pictures. I was surprised (and pleased for her sake) that there were still low-end cameras available--thought smart phones had taken over that market.

When I was on a cruise recently I was struck by how few point and shoot models the camera store onboard was selling. They had a couple of Nikon Coolpix and a couple of Canon Elph models. In the past, they had a much greater selection.
When we went on shore excursions there were a few diehards carrying DSLRs but most travelers were using a smartphone. I have a travel zoom (Panasonic Lumix) that in my opinion blows away any smartphone but I was one of the very few with this sort of apparatus.

Some smartphones are getting very smart when it comes to photography. The Huawei P20 Pro, which was just launched in Canada has a 3 lens system designed by Leica. Those guys also designed the lens in my Lumix travel camera. The Huawei combines the lenses with powerful software which gives great detail and image quaity - and you can get up to a 5X telephoto effect. That is about the same as a cheap point and shoot will give you today. Of course, you also get a computer and phone plus the ability to back up in the cloud and easily post on Instagram or Snapchat.
You pay for it though - I think it's around $1000 Canadian or $800 US. You can get a pretty fine camera for that money - one that doesn't rely on computer wizardry to get a good image.https://www.dpreview...dmc-zs200-tz200

The image below was made 5 years ago with a camera you can buy from KEH for less than $100 US right now.

One other thought. Maybe the Millennials will see all the old fogeys running around snapping photos with Smartphones and decide that isn't for them - too Boomer-like. Just as they have gone back to vinyl, turntables and analog music, perhaps they'll actually return to using cameras for photography - maybe even film cameras. Stranger things have happened.